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Rich Products Corporation

October 14, 2015

Proofpoint Helps Global Food Manufacturer Locate Sensitive Data

Imagine operating a global food manufacturing corporation that generates massive amounts of data on every topic from finance and HR to research and development. For Rich Products Corporation (Rich’s), most of the data was largely unclassified, unorganized and located across multiple datacenters and distribution centers.

Rich Products Corporation (Rich’s) is a family-owned food company and major supplier to retail and food service industries, with a diversified collection of food product categories manufactured in 50 locations on six continents. Founded in 1945, Rich’s makes more than 2,000 different products for customers in 112 countries.

Without true visibility into the unstructured data, Rich’s IT staff couldn’t determine what was sensitive and what was not, making it difficult to project security budgets. Matthew Gracie, security analyst at Rich’s, said, “We examined many traditional data loss prevention solutions but found them cost prohibitive. But we still needed an inventory of what data was out there and the tools to figure out what we needed to protect.”

Discovering the Advantages of Proofpoint
Rich’s turned to Proofpoint Data Discover, a cloud-based solution designed to identify and remediate sensitive content across an enterprise. Data Discover monitors centrally managed file servers, including Microsoft SharePoint, and helps ensure the content is compliant with corporate policy and any appropriate industry regulations.

Files can be tracked from the time of creation, along with identifying the creator, all the way through storage to ensure the appropriate controls are in place. With Data Discover, Rich’s was able to do rapid discovery of the data for classification and relocation and then provide ongoing monitoring and enforcement to reinforce its corporate data policy.

Matthew Gracie said, “Data Discover is fantastic in terms of generating a document inventory and heat map of our file stores – there was really no way to do this manually. With Data Discover, we were able to build our inventory, meet with business owners and set reliable data classifications that we could enforce with encryption.”

With Data Discover in place, Gracie was ready to scan the main file server at Rich’s headquarters. He found more than half a million files in departmental shared drives, including documents, spreadsheets and PowerPoint presentations. Data Discover was able to quickly identify several thousand documents containing sensitive data that needed additional protection.

Extending the Reach to See What's Out There
Rich’s intends to extend into all the regional facilities that use file servers and SharePoint sites, covering an additional 40-50 facilities globally. According to Matthew Gracie, “Dealing with a breach is at the top of our mind. With everything you see in the paper, the general assumption is that everyone gets breached sooner or later. It’s vital that organizations get their data locked down on the inside as quickly as possible. Data Discover helps us do that. And we’re now in a position where we have a better grasp of what’s out there and where to secure the data. With this approach, compromised credentials don’t matter—outsiders can’t access our intellectual property or PCI data because Data Discover has classified it, and we’ve taken the precautions necessary by encrypting our most sensitive data.”